


bleed to love him

by morvendigby (hookedphantom)



Category: Holby City
Genre: M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, self-harm mention, tumblr user crispycrumblycrust made me take my tags about this being shit off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-17 10:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16514981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hookedphantom/pseuds/morvendigby
Summary: in which john gaskell decides that love is shit





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry this is bad

John Gaskell didn’t cry. (He did.) 

Not when he woke up and found the bed next to him completely empty. He had never done... that with someone before. And it had felt a little special. Not that he blamed Henrik for leaving, and not that he blamed Roxanna for Henrik’s affections. 

He did blame Henrik for making him think that they could be something. He did blame Henrik for using him as a... last resort. And he did blame Henrik for letting him fall in love. 

He rolled out of bed (John never rolled out of bed. He wasn’t like that. He always faced the day with passion and cockiness.) onto the floor, picking up his scattered clothes from the ground and breathing in their scent. He had hoped they would smell like Henrik. 

They did, a little. The whole room smelled of Henrik, John, sweat, and sex. John didn’t know sex had a scent, but my god, it did. He was almost willing to let himself bask in it a little. 

Then he remembered that it was all shit. No point in basking in the scent of their night together if Henrik had fucking left. 

John spent the whole day avoiding Henrik and Roxanna. He did that for multiple reasons. He didn’t want to talk to Henrik, because Henrik might get the wrong idea about how John felt about their… dalliance.

He also knew that if he hung out with the two of them, he would get jealous. He had seen them a couple times, laughing together, Henrik acting as if he hadn’t spent the last evening in John’s bed. 

It pissed him off, if he was honest. He didn’t really ever get pissed off, just mildly perturbed. Apparently that wasn’t true when it came to Henrik. John found it hard to accept that he could ever feel this much about any one person, that this was what love meant for him. 

Love. Oh, for fuck’s sake. 

And maybe he did love Henrik. Maybe. John didn’t really know what love felt like. He’d never experienced it before. His parents, well. They weren’t the “I love you” type of people. Acknowledging his accomplishments would be a slight nod and that was it. 

He didn’t even really know if he could feel. Maybe he was just meant to be good at things, being a doctor. Emotions weren’t John Gaskell’s thing. He looked at the faint lines on his skin, the previous tests to ensure he wasn’t numb. The scars were old, he hadn’t given a shit about feelings in a while. 

John Gaskell didn’t cry. (He did.) 

Not when he pulled a razor blade out of the bathroom drawer and contemplated it. He thought about it, dragging it across his skin, just to make sure he could still feel pain. 

To make sure he could love. 

Would Henrik like that? That John had bled all over the bathroom floor to make sure he could love Henrik? Would Henrik know what it meant that he would be willing? 

John supposed the answer to that would be no. He put the blade back, leaning on the edge of the tub, running his fingers over the previous reminders of what he had done to himself. 

Not very many people knew about that, what he had done. He wanted it to stay that way. Nobody wanted a doctor who couldn’t even save them self. 

He sat there on the floor, a lot longer than any sane person would have, thinking about Henrik. How what they had done changed his entire being. How John would never be the same. 

John Gaskell didn’t cry. (He did.) 

Not when he woke up alone on the bathroom floor. He remembered what happened yesterday and the day before, and what those events had done to his brain. What he had thought about doing to himself. 

He remembered a dream where he spent the night in Henrik’s arms, whispering about how much he loved him. 

He remembered how much Henrik loved Roxanna, and how much he wanted Henrik to love him instead. 

That morning, he approached Henrik. 

“So. About what we did.” 

Henrik looked into John’s eyes. John tried to pretend he didn’t look like he regretted it. 

“It was a mistake. It won’t happen ever again.” 

“Right. Yeah, of course. Never again.” 

They spent the day, side by side, but didn’t speak a single word. John knew that Roxanna noticed, but didn’t dare to ask. John wondered if Henrik had told her about what they had done. 

He hadn’t. 

John Gaskell didn’t cry. 

Not when he looked at himself in a mirror, realizing that this was destroying him. Two days, walking like the living dead. 

Is this what love does to people? No wonder they all die. It’s shit. 

He knew, in his heart, that it would always feel like shit. As long as Henrik loved Roxanna, he wouldn’t love John. Not the way John wanted, any way. 

And John wanted so much to be back in bed with Henrik, tangled all together, hands and lips and hips. 

And that was when he decided. Hardened his heart, as it were. If he couldn’t have Henrik - god knows he didn’t want anyone else - he wouldn’t have anyone different. And Henrik wouldn’t have anyone else either. 

John was good at a lot of things. He could manipulate people, make things happen, make friends. He was smart, he would create medical miracles and go on to change the world. Most of all, he was determined. 

He couldn’t make Henrik fall in love with him, though. He couldn’t make the one thing he wanted most in the world happen. He knew it wouldn’t happen, as soon as Henrik faced him with nothing but regret in his eyes. And if he couldn’t make it happen, maybe it wasn’t worth it. 

That ended up being okay with John. John knew he’d probably fuck love up anyways. 

John Gaskell didn’t cry. 

Not over Henrik Hanssen. Not anymore.


	2. bleed to love him, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which john's spiral causes a relapse of his worst old habit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has super graphic self harm in it. please be warned, please take care of yourselves. 
> 
> also, canon divergent. roxanna wasn't killed, she just left.

John Gaskell didn’t cry. (He did.) 

Not when Henrik said he had doubts about John. 

Henrik not believing in him was the last straw. Roxanna had left, Essie planned to expose him, and none of that had made him upset. Angry, sure, but not upset. 

He fought the tears, denied them as his face continued to get hot, but they poured down his cheeks. He lifted a hand to wipe them away, and saw the blood on his palm. 

He frowned, and poked at the cuts in his hands. They were from his fingernails - he had clenched his fist until it bled. 

It wasn’t the first time John had made himself bleed. The cuts were old, very faded, but still there. Still a reminder of the way he had been when he wanted so desperately to feel like a normal person. 

He used to think he was numb. Then he realized he felt too much, too much to bear. It was too much to continue loving someone who didn’t love him back. 

He sat on the floor of the wet lab, looking at his hands, his arms. Every piece of him that was a reminder of emotion. 

He remembered that night, where he lay down on the bathroom floor and decided he wouldn’t cry about Henrik anymore. On that night, he had also decided work was all that matters. 

He was a fucking liar. All those years, and he had never stopped loving Henrik. He had just let himself pretend he didn’t. 

John Gaskell didn’t cry. (He did.) 

He heard a knock on the door of the wet lab, and shouted out that he was busy. 

Henrik entered anyways. It took a few moments before his eyes finally took hold of John. 

John, who was always so cocky, so stoic, while he spouted endless bullshit. John, who had only once allowed himself to unravel completely in front of his best friend in the entire world. 

(The love of his life.)

John desperately wiped away the tears while Henrik knelt beside him and wrapped his arms around John. John shrugged him off, pushed him away. It was enough that he was feeling, he didn’t need Henrik’s fucking sympathy to make it worse. 

Henrik looked hurt, but dropped his arms back to his sides and tried to meet John’s eyes. 

“It’s fine, Henrik. Go.”

And Henrik, broken-hearted that his friend would not accept his comfort, still understood. Henrik wasn’t really an emotional person either. 

“Tell me what you need, John.”

John fought back another wave of hot and intense tears and managed to keep himself from saying “you.”

“I need you to leave me be. I need you to trust me. I need you to… believe in me.”

Henrik shook his head sadly. 

“You know I can’t do that.”

Henrik turned, slowly, hoping for protest, and walked away. 

Henrik had broken John’s heart once, and as much as John wanted to lie to himself, he knew he had let him break it again. 

John wanted to be able to tell Henrik. Tell Henrik that he was a liar, that he was pretending to fix people when all he could do was make them worse. Wanted to tell him how much he loved him. He couldn’t, though. Not when Henrik had already lost all trust in him. 

If he told Henrik the truth, Henrik would leave. And he couldn’t let Henrik go. 

If John told Henrik the truth, he would have to tell him that he didn’t really know how to love. He didn’t know how to feel. He’d never understood. 

As he sat on the floor of the wet lab and cried, all the emotion he had bottled up since that fateful night he had made love to Henrik made itself known. Everything he had felt that he had pretended wasn’t real, that he had tried to channel into his work. 

John Gaskell didn’t cry. (He did.)

Not when he stood up and grabbed an empty test tube, contemplated it, then smashed it on the floor. He saw his face reflected on the smashed shards of glass, a twisted grin on his face. 

He bent and picked up a shard, not caring much if it cut into his skin. After all, it was a reminder of who he was and the things he had done. 

He sat back down on the floor, letting little shards cut into his legs. Lifting up the leg of his scrub trousers, he used the shard to cut into his skin. His blood pooled around the glass, and he revelled in the pain he was causing himself. He dragged the blade, then lifted it and cut the other way, forming an L. He cut across his ankle until it spelled the word “Liar” in blood. 

He knew he should care for the cuts. He always had when this was one of his fucked up habits. But those cuts were a reminder that he could feel. These were a reminder of who he was, at the core of his soul. 

He had never even cared about the lies. He lied to Meena, to Essie, even to Roxanna. Those were easy, maybe even a little fun. 

But to Henrik? 

God, how horrible of a person did he have to be? To lie to the one true love of his life?

Would Henrik come back? Would he see, then, what he had done to John, when he stopped believing in him? Would he see that John had bled all over the floor, because of how much he loved Henrik?

Would Henrik come back, and see that John would do anything for him? Even bleed, bleed to love him? John would cut anywhere if he could prove to Henrik that he loved him. 

But John knew. John knew that he fucked up love. He fucked it up by lying, by being terrible, by driving his friends away. 

John Gaskell cried. 

Yes, over Henrik Hanssen. 

Yes, over the love of his life.


End file.
